5 Rules of Effective Online Reputation Management

A few years back, PR and reputation management were considered matters of concern for big businesses and celebrities. It seemed that smaller brands had nothing to do with this reputation management thing as they had a little room for feedback.

The scenario has changed significantly making reputation management an important component for all sizes of businesses. In this era of active audiences where people are free to express their opinion and impact others’ views on the same, it is important for every brand to maintain a positive reputation on all online platforms that set interaction between people and the brand.

Online Reputation Management

In this phase of Google search, no business can afford to have an untrustworthy and disreputable image. Online reputation management here can help small & big companies to find ways to improve their reputation for their target audience. Here’s what they can do-

An Audit For Online Reputation:

Before starting the ORM process, you should invest time in conducting an extensive online reputation audit. The idea will uncover how people will see your brand and what challenges you will face. In simple terms, you would need to do some sort of brand monitoring. You can conduct this process by following these simple steps:

Open an incognito window and enter your brand name in Google search box
Look for Google My Business-related features on the page and evaluate comments, ratings, reviews, user-generated photos, etc.
Two cases can be possible: with social media accounts, the sites can be managed easily, while with the third-party listing, you can reach the site owners to remove/add misleading bits. Try to reach out to the review writers and talk regarding the dissatisfaction that they got a wrong opinion about the brand.
Try to understand the general sentiments through the reviewers that require your urgent attention.

The manual audit should get the answer to – what search results do you have control over? What kind of website do you see when you type your brand? Are most visitors able to find your brand on Google? What kind of sentiments do your users have?

Prepare a Strategy:

When done with the first step, you have to set up an online reputation management strategy. As you are aware of the paramount importance, you should prioritize things that you need to focus on first. It’s good if you balance some factors that can impact your decisions and these may include setting up your goals through platforms you have direct access to.

Next, you can define your boundaries and limitations by reviewing how many resources you can allocate for the project; be realistic in assessment for this online process. Try to impact the biggest criterion for your choice as you have to allocate the resources into channels with the highest stakes for your business.

Now, analyze which task is critical and should be addressed first through the plan that includes handling critical and challenging tasks. Do not do what is easy, do what is important.

Establishing Guidelines and Tone of Voice:

While dealing with online reputation, it becomes important to establish policy definitions, guidelines, and voice of tone. The policy documents will vary with the kind of business and also with the same general idea. The policy documentation here refers to new comments, reviews, and other types of mentions. So, you need to be very specific with who is in charge and how to respond to the concerns.

And, here the princess begins.

Differentiate urgent or non-urgent responses. Get reviews that are of the utmost urgency for your business.
Pay special attention to negative reviews on any websites like Reddit or else.
Prioritize cases that are important to your brand and customers. You should know which reviews need an immediate response in a certain timeframe.
Make sure you reach out to those people and carefully acknowledge their concerns and try to get positive responses from them. You can also share documents that include FAQs about your brand and it should get a reviewer familiar with your guidelines.

Monitoring Brand Mentions Efficiently:

Monitoring online conversation gives you a real-time view of your brand’s online presence and opportunity for a timely response. You can search for efficient brand monitoring tools that can help you set up a campaign to monitor mentions of your brand, people, and products. It will let people know that you actually care for what people say and provide a timely response to resolve negative mentions or references.

Manage Negative Reviews:

There is no denying that bad reviews have a direct negative impact on your business’ bottom line. These reviews also discourage your existing and potential customers from using your services or product.

According to a survey, approximately 94% of consumers admit that a negative review changes their opinion of purchasing anything from a business. Therefore, it gets significantly important to deal with the issue.

To manage these reviews, you can start assessing the most problematic or negative reviews first. Reviews that rank high in google searches can give you a point you can start with. Quickly run through some popular platforms like Google My Business, social media platforms (Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, Instagram, etc.), Trustpilot, Feefo, Review.io or similar platforms to find and fix the problem. Capture regular snapshots of reviews to deal with them effectively.

Conclusion:

Online reputation management can become a base to form a positive image of your brand in front of the most potential customers. You can contact a reputation management company like Source Soft Solutions to do the job of beneficial reputation management on your behalf. Contact us today at +1 (609) 945-4955.